Page 144 of The Enforcer

Nova’s stomach lurched as everything in him opposed it, but still he said, “Yes. We agree.”

“Okay.” Enzo held up his hands. “Are we done?”

Nova’s stomach was churning.

He felt like he was going to be sick all over this table, but one way or the other, he owed Tino this, so he said, “No,” and reached down to grab his briefcase. “We’re not done.” He placed it on the table and clicked the locks. “I have several other issues. First, we’re going to discuss the retribution owed to our Borgata from the Brambinos.”

“Are you fucked?” Enzo growled.

“You sold my brother,” Nova reminded him. “You profited off him. Our children are supposed to be protected fromyour trade. That was a deal inked a long time ago.”

“That is true,” Dante agreed.

“He’s not a child of Cosa Nostra.” Enzo shrugged. “He’s outside it. Not that there’s proof, because there isn’t.”

Nova pulled out all the printed e-mails he’d gotten off Mary’s computer. “I have several discussions right here between Mary and—”

“Mary is your problem,” Enzo interrupted him. “If Mary is guilty of something, that’s a Moretti issue now.”

“E-mails between Mary and Carmine,” Nova finished as he threw the papers on the table. “Not only were they discussing business via e-mail, which everyone knows is forbidden, but there are several e-mails where the humiliation of the Moretti Borgata is discussed with obvious amusement. While Tino is not technically protected, though he certainly was used for our name, you’ll also see the discussions over Carina, Don Moretti’s only legitimate granddaughter, whoisprotected. I believe the reason Tino continued to do what he did was because they threatened to sell his sister once our brother Romeo got a release date.”

Nova gestured to the stacks of printed e-mails as proof.

“You can read them, but the CliffsNotes version was they were going to kidnap our don’s only granddaughter and sell her to the highest bidder. We would never have known what happened to her, and maybe they would’ve succeeded, because fuck knows they got a whole shitload of kids enslaved by them who’ve somehow disappeared from society.”

Nova reached into his suitcase again and tossed a handful of pictures onto the table.

“I want you to look at these pictures.” Nova slammed his hand on top of them. “These are some of the children being sold by the Brambinos.” He picked up a picture of a boy with dark, curly hair. “This is Jorge Brambino.” He tossed the picture aside and picked up another one. “This is Helga Brambino.” He picked up another picture, this one of a girl who was six on her last birthday. “This is Jamie Brambino.” He leaned over and put the little girl’s picture in front of Enzo pointedly. “Her father made her to sell her!”

Enzo shrugged without shame. “She came from my balls. I can sell her if I want.”

Nova couldn’t help it; he grabbed the picture and shoved it in Enzo’s face, slamming his palm against Enzo’s nose so hard a crack sounded. Maso, the Brambino enforcer, pulled his gun out and pointed it out Nova.

“I don’t think so,” Carlo said from behind him, and Nova turned to see Carlo had his gun out too.

So did Sergio, the De Luca enforcer next to him.

“There are more.” Nova sat back as Enzo wiped blood from his face and glared at Nova furiously. Nova pulled out another stack of pictures. “The Brambinos work in very highline circles. They cater to clients who have a fetish for interesting last names.” Nova set a picture in front of the Viteris. And another in front of the Lombardis. Then he set four in front of the Savios and pulled the one on the bottom out and put it on top so Marcell could see it. “I guess Mazza isn’t quite as interesting as Savio, but it’s good enough. My brother wore a unique leather band on his wrist that was clasped with a lion head. That is the Brambino marker for their sex slaves. The slaves will use them to find one another and have a tendency to randomly go up and hug one another.”

“And tell them they matter,” Marcell said as he looked at Enzo furiously. “You motherfucker. You’ve been selling my daughter. You’re the reason she’s strung out on drugs.”

Enzo looked pale. “There is no proof. He’s bullshitting you.”

“I used the information I got off Mary’s computer to hack into Carmine’s system. These pictures were on his computer along with encrypted files that detailed their value and client list.”

Nova looked away from the horrified commission members and stared at the last picture in his briefcase, one he pulled out of the stack twenty seconds before he tossed them on the table. He saw Dante De Luca glance at it and frown, but Nova closed his briefcase.

“How the fuck would you be able to read the files if they were encrypted?” Enzo asked, still surprisingly cool under pressure. “I call bullshit.”

Nova held up his hands and looked around at all of them. “Really? You don’t think I can crack an encrypted file? Motherfuckers like me are the reason Carmine’s not supposed to keep this shit on his computer. It’s the reason he’s not supposed to be e-mailing about it either. I could’ve been the feds. He broke the oath. He exposed all of us.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Nova glared at Enzo. “I want the Brambinos disbanded.”

“You can’t fucking disband us.”

“You broke the oath. You used our children,” Nova started. “You can either be disbanded, or this war starts to get real interesting, because I assure you the Morettis take a huge fucking issue with this.”